Once upon a time, medical informatics was a new and narrowly-defined field and those entering the field had the opportunity to hear the pioneers present seminal work at the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC). During the 25 years of the Symposium (now known as the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Fall Symposium), the boundaries of the field have expanded, some pioneers have died, and this opportunity has decreased. To address the need to acknowledge and to learn from history, this application seeks funds to support three special activities related to the 2001 AMIA meeting which will be held November 3-7 in Washington, DC. These activities will facilitate the documentation and dissemination of sessions focused on "Best Practices, Lessons Learned, and Visions for the Future" for educational purposes. Five plenary speakers will address this theme from the perspective of Research (Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD), Training (Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD), Practice (Octo Barnett, MD), The Symposium (Donald A. B. Lindberg, MD), and Patient Safety (David Bates, MD). A panel led by Judy Ozbolt, RN, PhD will provide viewpoints on the 20 years of nursing at the Symposium. In addition, a case study showcase will highlight exemplary practices or useful lessons in medical informatics. Following the Symposium, a medical informatics history web site will be developed as method of disseminating the conference activities focused on history and lessons learned. Moreover, the site will serve as an excellent educational resource on the topic of medical informatics history. The contents of the web site will include: 1) plenary videos; 2) subset of abstracts and papers (pdf format) from the conference proceedings that are relevant to history, best practices, and lessons learned; 3) photo gallery of medical informatics pioneers; 4) links to centers of excellence in medical informatics; and 5) bibliographic resource list.